While most people seek out physiotherapy to treat sports or post-accident injuries, a physiotherapist in London is focusing in a different area — pre- and postnatal women’s pelvises.

Through pelvic floor therapy, Ibukun Afolabi helps strengthen and support women’s pelvises and all of the vital contents inside them. She also empowers women, helping them understand issues that were once — and still are — passed off as side-effects of pregnancy.

“Women often don’t know anything about that part of their bodies, they disconnect from here to here,” said Afolabi as she pointed above and below her pelvis.

Pelvic floor muscles sit at the bottom of a pelvis like a hammock. They support pelvic organs and are closely related with other nerves and ligaments in the body.

About one in three women who are pregnant or who have given birth suffer from pelvic floor dysfunction, which leads to issues such as incontinence, chronic pain and even the shifting of organs. June happens to be pelvic organ prolapse awareness month.

The therapy that Afolabi provides is commonly known as “internal pilates” and can be rather intimate, since the pelvic floor actually has to be felt. But pelvic floor physiotherapists work with women to make them feel confident about themselves and try to get their bodies functioning normally again. More than anything, the focus is on the mother and how she feels, rather than the baby.

“Most of my clients told me that at their regular followups (doctors) aren’t asking about the moms, they’re asking about the babies,” said Afolabi. “They might get pamphlets about mood disorders or post-partum depression, but that’s it.”

This type of physiotherapy is fairly new to Canada, only having gained some traction over the last 10 years. In countries like France, however, the government subsidizes pelvic floor physiotherapy for women who have just given birth.

Afolabi said she believes women’s health care isn’t always taken seriously — especially when it comes to chronic pain. She said that unfortunately, family doctors can act as gatekeepers at times, treating pain with pills rather than sending women to physiotherapy.

“Our system’s not great at treating pain at all,” said Afolabi. “If women can connect to this pelvic area, they feel things that they have never felt before. They become more empowered to take health into their own hands.”

As part of Afolabi’s practice, she advocates to community groups and medical practices to spread the word about pelvic floor physiotherapy. Holding community sessions at her own practice, The Mamas Physio, she educates women and new mothers, telling them that they don’t just have to live with their side-effects.

“One lady I treated had kids in their teens but dealt with incontinence while running,” said Afolabi. “She was amazed after a few sessions that she could run without leaking again.”

It’s stories like these, of women who can finally live their lives normally again, that motivate Afolabi to continue and advocate for pelvic floor physiotherapy.

“Nobody knows how their pregnancy is going to go,” said Afolabi. “But if a woman knows how to minimize pressures and is focusing on themselves for once, it can be huge and just great.”